DEATH ROW INMATE GETS ANOTHER CHANCE | 20 Years Later And SCOTUS Still So White | Best Beat Around
January 8, 2018
A SECOND CHANCE AT LIFE
|This morning, the justices gave a reprieve to a black death row inmate in Georgia so that he can challenge his sentence due to racist comments made by a white juror in the case — the juror used a racial epithet in an affidavit and questioned whether black people have souls. The facts of the case, however, are not in dispute. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the inmate, KEITH LEROY THARPE, deserves another day in court to prove that his death sentence was tainted by racist bigotry. JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS objected to the decision and was joined by JUSTICES SAMUEL ALITO and NEIL GORSUCH.
THE FLIP SIDE
|Today, the Supreme Court left in place a Mississippi law that lets businesses and government workers refuse to provide services to gay and transgender people on religious grounds. The appeals to the law contended that the measure violates the Constitution, somewhat representing the flip side of the cake case argued before justices last year. For that case, the justices must consider whether the state can require a baker to make a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding. Both cases test states’ ability to regulate the conflict of LGBT rights and religious freedoms.
SAME OLE SCOTUS
|“Supreme Court clerks are overwhelmingly white and male. Just like 20 years ago.” That’s the headline of Tony Mauro’s piece in USA Today in which he remembers when USA Today reported on Supreme Court clerk demographics nearly twenty years ago. “The stories, which occupied more space in USA Today than any other topic in a single day’s edition until then, caused a stir. Civil rights leaders protested and got arrested on the steps of the Supreme Court, and justices were routinely asked by members of Congress why they have not hired more minorities.” Mauro says that in the time since he wrote those stories long ago, very little progress has been made. Mauro notes, “You might wonder why all this matters. They are, after all, clerks, not justices. But in reality, they are crucial to the functioning of the nation’s highest court. They help shape the court’s docket and draft its decisions. Minorities are simply not playing these important roles to any large extent.”
THE BEST BEAT AROUND
|Reuters Staff explains what it’s like to cover the Supreme Court, from wading through seas of legal papers, to tracking cases as they make their way up through the court system. It’s the beat Lawrence Hurley sees is one of the broadest and most interesting at Reuters. We couldn’t agree more.
OTHER NEWS
Told Their Treehouse Must Go, Owners Appeal To Supreme Court
The Associated PressOn Florida's 'Forgotten Coast,' A Supreme Court Fight Over Fresh Water
The Washington Post“Apalachicola Bay, an estuary recognized by the United Nations for its uniqueness, once produced 10 percent of the nation’s oysters and 90 percent of those from Florida. Why it doesn’t anymore — why its oyster production has fallen so dramatically — has been the subject of decades of litigation, which now has landed before the Supreme Court.”